Visceral Reactions

This weekend I went to get my hair cut so as to avoid my massive pile of grading and the paper I had to write for an upcoming conference. The barber shop was extremely busy and I waited at least an hour before my turn came along. Before leaving I made the mistake of not eating lunch (or breakfast), and was thus in a generally foul mood. At a certain point, one of the stylists called out names, and miss-pronounced my name without me catching it, so that another person ended up going ahead of me, despite the fact that I had come before them. In this moment I'm ashamed to say that all sorts of horrible thoughts about citizens who don't speak English flashed through my mind. Ordinarly I do not have this sort of reaction to speakers of foreign languages. In Chicago I lived in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the city, populated by large Indian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European populations. It never bothered me when I went into stores and restaurants where English wasn't spoken. Moreover, I had a very diverse group of students in Chicago, and was cognizant of the difficulties for students studying philosophy when English was their second language, and I did everything I could to help them. For these reasons the sheer immediacy of my emotional response surprised me, and it took me a moment to remind myself that I was reacting in this way because I was hungry and had a tremendous amount of work to do, not because the woman had made a mistake which was, no doubt, not the result of her language (the other stylist had written my name down in a nearly illegible fashion) and which was honest enough.

This little occurance got me thinking about the nature of social relations more broadly. One of the central claims of Laclau and Mouffe (and Zizek, though for very different reasons), is that "society does not exist". By this Laclau, Mouffe, and Zizek do not mean that there are no social relations, but rather that society is riddled with irreducible antagonisms such that a society that forms a harmonious and smoothly funtioning organism is impossible. That is, the antagonism characterizing social existence isn't an accident of poor design or organization that could be rectified simply by organizing society in a better way, but is intrinsic to social relations themselves. Nor is it the result of another group that undermines "our traditional way of life". Were that other group eradicated or kicked out, a new form of antagonism would arise in its place (we find a consistent pattern of this way of thinking-- whether it be Plato holding the poets and sophists responsible for the ills of society, Augustine holding the infidel responsible, the Nazi's holding Jews responsible, or a nation holding foreigners responsible --there's always the nostalgic vision of a harmony that once was and the formulation of a contaminant and impediment to that position). The content of this antagonism can, of course, take many different forms, but the form itself remains the same and is ineradicable. In this respect, this real of antagonism works like a sliding puzzle game, where I can move the pieces about creating different patterns, configurations, and expressions, but the empty square always remains. The empty square itself cannot be eradicated, thus the antagonism merely displaces itself from expression to expression, forming something akin to a Freudian "dream-work" pertaining to antagonistic social relations. In reflecting on the antagonism I experienced towards the stylist and recognizing that it had nothing to do with her or her language, I don't eradicate antagonism as such, once and for all, but instead displace it elsewhere. For instance, that same day I got in a heated debate with an enthusiast of Lakoff, finding a new target for my unbearable jouissance (and one far more respectable academically).

Antagonistic social relations thus follow the Lacanian logic of the real in two principle respects: On the one hand, Lacan argues that the real is that which always returns to its place. While antagonism can take on a plurality of forms, it always returns in some form to upset social relations and undermine the attempt to form a harmonious unity or totality. In the clinical setting, for instance, a cognitive psychologist might successfully help a woman overcome her phobia of weasels, but insofar as this symptom gives body to the real of her drive, this real will displace itself elsewhere, forming another symptom that allows for the same drive satisfaction. So too at the social level. While I might eradicate my antagonism in one place, that antagonism returns in another place to mark the empty square or impossibility that haunts all social relations. On the other hand, Lacan argues that the real is the impossible. Here the impossible can be taken as the impossible to eradicate or resolve.

I suspect that these antagonistic social relations often occur at a visceral and immediate level, such that we only retroactively find reasons for our hatred and anger. In the case of immigration debates in the United States, for instance, it is likely that hostility towards foreigners is first an immediate and visceral reaction to foreign languages, different modes of dress, different physical features, different customs, etc., and only secondarily based on reasons. Someone goes through a drive through at McDonalds and has trouble communicating with the cashier, and immediately experiences an overwhelming anger. They call the phone company and are given the option of choosing between Spanish or English, and immediately experiences anger that there are other language options. Someone immediately experiences hostility upon witnessing a homosexual couple in public. Or in my case, I experience an immediate irritation with Deleuze and Guattari's talk of schizophrenia in Anti-Oedipus, and sometimes even experience something like a blind rage when I see some of my younger college students wearing their baseball caps cocked to the side. It is only retroactively, following this visceral response, that we seek to find reasons as to why our reaction as justified. We do not first look at how immigration is negatively impacting the country and then respond in this way. We do not first look for ways in which homosexuals are undermining family, contrary to God, and pose a threat of pedophilia (which is statistically false), but only retroactively seek out these reasons. I do not first conclude that Deleuze and Guattari's rhetoric of schizophrenia is damaging to clear philosophical thought and then react negatively. In our recent exchange on the virtual, Yusef, for instance, waved a red flag in my face without knowing it in evoking this language, even though we share very similar aims and theoretical concerns and I immediately responded like a charging bullm marshelling all the reasons I could to undermine his use of language despite the fact that I was paradoxically undermining some of my own philosophical commitments-- not to mention my communicative ethics, based on behaving magnanimously, never attacking the person personally, and always holding out that dialogue is possible no matter how frustrating that discussion gets --in doing so. No doubt the further failure of this communicative exchange emerged from our own egos getting in the way, where conceding a point or "losing" would be experienced as a loss of masculinity or a public humiliation.

On the one hand, if it is true that there is an ineradicable real at the heart of social relations, if it is true that social relations will always be contaminated by antagonistic jouissance, then knowing this can certainly bring some peace of mind in public discussions. If I adopt the traditional liberal model of rational discourse, where the aim is to argue according to the principles of logic, finding factual support for my claims, I'm going to be led to play the part of the "beautiful soul", seeing the world as an irrational place where no one plays by the rules of "communicative reason" (Habermas), and where unreason perpetually gets in the way. This conception of social relations will render me more cognizant of the role that jouissance plays in social relations, and will therefore lead me to search for ways to displace certain contemporary antagonisms while also avoiding utopian fantasies of getting rid of antagonism once and for all. Moreover, if I recognize that my experience of antagonism tends to increase in proportion to the strength of my identification with particular group signifiers (Lacanian, American, Christian, Deleuzian, Lakoffian, systems theorist, French, etc.), I can strategize ways to minimize these identifications and the boundary logic they inevitably introduce, thereby diminishing my experience of antagonism. On the other hand, this view also leads, I think, to a certain pessimistic despair. For if all social relations are ultimately formed in the way of somehow managing antagonism, and if antagonism as such (the empty square) is itself ineradicable, what hope is there for political engagement at all? In short, what is the optimal form of social relation for contending with the non-existence or impossibility of society?